


where not to look for freedom

by miss_sofia



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 01:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9267386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_sofia/pseuds/miss_sofia
Summary: we don't have to be who we were before now.





	

It could have been Manhattan, it could have been a party five years ago, one he'd crashed and she'd hosted. Maybe he would have looked at the hair bow and the icy smile and the perfectly curled waves instead of at the fiery blonde bombshell dancing on a table. Maybe she would have spotted the lost messy-haired Brooklyn boy resting against a wall instead of rolling her eyes and biting her nails and wondering if she could escape to the bathroom without being noticed.  
  
It could have been the Hamptons, bumping into each other by the ice-cream shop, her purse to the ground and him to pick it up again, a grateful smile, a petty need for validation, a meaningless hook-up at the pool. Maybe she would swim lazily after sex, let her guard down and pull her hair up, parted lips and fluttering lashes underneath the summer sun. Maybe he would lie down on his stomach, draw figures with his fingers in the surface of the water, feel the heat burning his back and internally beat himself up for not having a notebook handy.  
  
It could have been a dream, a piece of fiction, her just a character in his book which he hand't yet had the pleasure to meet, him a carefully designed alter-ego who could do all the things he would not dare in reality. Maybe he would be taller and richer and wittier and she would be warmer and loving and caring, and maybe they would have candlelit dinners and make love by the fireplace and live happily ever after in typewritten pages.  
  
It could have been Paris, years from now, sharing a table on a winter day in a backstreet café. Maybe he would have a signing at Shakespeare & Co. later on, and a beard to match his messy curls, coffee and cigarette stained teeth, the rugged look of someone who lived a good life, a battered paperback in one pocket and an expensive leather-bound _cahier_ in the other. Maybe she would look exactly the same, a long coat over a short dress, painted lips, not seeming a day older than on her twentieth birthday, maybe she would have a cheating husband and five bags full of retail therapy and shattered dreams.  
  
It could have been Manhattan, the Hamptons, Paris, a dream, it could have been London, Prague, Rio, Ibiza, Tokyo, a hidden beach in Australia for all he cares.  
  
Instead, it's this: The two of them, years after uneventful events, ignoring and befriending and tiptoeing around each other, crushes and tragedies and miscommunication and tales of teenage love behind them, a whole city behind them, a whole _life_ behind them. The two of them, holding hands at the JFK, hiding in plain sight, endless possibilities ahead. "So, Blair, who do you want to be this time?"

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted in 2012 @lj.


End file.
